Last September, some of the Debian Linux distribution's leadership wanted to make sure that Etch, the next version of Debian, arrived on its December 4th due date. Almost two months later, though, according to the February 17th Release Critical Bug Report memo to the Debian Developers Announcement list, there are still 541 release critical bugs.

Well, the above post may not be the longest, but it accurately answers the question - who was the idiot that modded it down?

Linus and RH are both very good examples of how free software developers may earn money. A company may need a feature that is not available, and it may sponsor a developer to implement it (some of the features of FreeBSD was developed this way). They can also participate in professional support and training, or work for a commercial Linux company.

Anyhow, if every software would be free software, that would mean a new arrangement or rearrangement of the way developers are being payed, but I don't believe that overall fewer (or more) developers will earn a living through writing software.